User Interaction Approaches For Managing Multiple UAS In The National Airspace

Use of Unmanned Aerial Systems (UASs) has grown steadily since the 1990s. They are becoming a standard tool for the military and are growing more commonplace in civilian applications. UASs of a vast array of sizes, capabilities and functions, are increasingly present in the National Airspace (NAS) and pressure to normalize their operations is taking on increasing urgency. The human interface for such systems will remain a critical component-and may increase in importance as human interactions are increasingly distanced, in time and/or space, from the locus of execution. Of particular complexity and concern are the use of larger UASs in dense traffic areas (such as cities) under high autonomy and with multiple vehicles per human operator. This paper summarizes a recently-completed review of multiple UAS operational concepts and evaluation of a suite of user interaction approaches for them. We have paid special attention to enabling ongoing situation awareness and prompt context switching. We have extensively leveraged our prior work on "Playbooks" for human tasking and delegation to automation. We conclude by presenting three novel human-machine interaction tools or approaches for such multi-UAS, high complexity, "routine" operations in the NAS: (1) a "strip-chart" view for combining vehicle-centric and task- or function-centric information in a timeline view, (2) an Activity Interchange display for facilitating task and vehicle handoffs within a defined task or play grammar, and (3) an approach applying plan recognition to verbal interactions to enable more intelligent and context-aware speech interactions for UAS control to speed and reduce workload in operator, Air Traffic Control and UAS interactions.